Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre
16 primary works • 20 total works
Book 1
First in the crime-fiction series set in the modern-day west, starring a half-French, half-Indian “character of legendary proportions” (Ridley Pearson).
Officially, Gabriel Du Pré is the cattle inspector for Toussaint, Montana, responsible for making sure no one tries to sell livestock branded by another ranch. Unofficially, he is responsible for much more than cows’ backsides. The barren country around Toussaint is too vast for the town’s small police force, and so, when needed, this hard-nosed Métis Indian lends a hand. When the sheriff offers gas money to investigate newly discovered plane wreckage in the desert, Du Pré quickly finds himself embroiled in a mystery stretching back a generation.
For three decades, the crashed plane sat in the sun as the bodies inside rotted away to their bones. Two skeletons are whole, but for one nothing remains but the hands, the skull, and the bullet that ended his life. The crime was hidden long ago, but in the Montana badlands, nothing stays buried forever . . .
In Gabriel Du Pré, “Bowen has taken the antihero of Hemingway and Hammett and brought him up to date . . . a fresh, memorable character” (The New York Times Book Review).
Officially, Gabriel Du Pré is the cattle inspector for Toussaint, Montana, responsible for making sure no one tries to sell livestock branded by another ranch. Unofficially, he is responsible for much more than cows’ backsides. The barren country around Toussaint is too vast for the town’s small police force, and so, when needed, this hard-nosed Métis Indian lends a hand. When the sheriff offers gas money to investigate newly discovered plane wreckage in the desert, Du Pré quickly finds himself embroiled in a mystery stretching back a generation.
For three decades, the crashed plane sat in the sun as the bodies inside rotted away to their bones. Two skeletons are whole, but for one nothing remains but the hands, the skull, and the bullet that ended his life. The crime was hidden long ago, but in the Montana badlands, nothing stays buried forever . . .
In Gabriel Du Pré, “Bowen has taken the antihero of Hemingway and Hammett and brought him up to date . . . a fresh, memorable character” (The New York Times Book Review).
Book 2
A "plain-spoken, deep-thinking Montana cattle inspector" takes on a serial killer in DC (The New York Times Book Review).
With misgivings, cattle inspector and sometime deputy Gabriel Du Pre has left his hometown of Toussaint, Montana, for big-city Washington, DC, where the Metis Indian fiddler has agreed to play his people's music for a Smithsonian festival. But like the frightened and confused horse galloping wildly down the National Mall, Du Pre is very much out of his element. He does know how to catch and calm a runaway horse, however.
If only catching a killer could be so simple. When a Cree woman from Canada who came to sing in the festival is found murdered, her death is just the first in a series of fatal attacks on Native Americans. Each killing is foretold by a shaman, and each time a primitive weapon is used. As the body count rises, Du Pre fears he might be the serial killer's ultimate target.
New York Times-bestselling author Ridley Pearson says about Peter Bowen's Montana mysteries: "The best of Tony Hillerman meets Zane Grey . . . Du Pre is a character of legendary proportions." And Booklist calls Gabriel Du Pre "one of the most unusual characters working the fictional homicide beat."
Specimen Song is the 2nd book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
With misgivings, cattle inspector and sometime deputy Gabriel Du Pre has left his hometown of Toussaint, Montana, for big-city Washington, DC, where the Metis Indian fiddler has agreed to play his people's music for a Smithsonian festival. But like the frightened and confused horse galloping wildly down the National Mall, Du Pre is very much out of his element. He does know how to catch and calm a runaway horse, however.
If only catching a killer could be so simple. When a Cree woman from Canada who came to sing in the festival is found murdered, her death is just the first in a series of fatal attacks on Native Americans. Each killing is foretold by a shaman, and each time a primitive weapon is used. As the body count rises, Du Pre fears he might be the serial killer's ultimate target.
New York Times-bestselling author Ridley Pearson says about Peter Bowen's Montana mysteries: "The best of Tony Hillerman meets Zane Grey . . . Du Pre is a character of legendary proportions." And Booklist calls Gabriel Du Pre "one of the most unusual characters working the fictional homicide beat."
Specimen Song is the 2nd book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Book 3
Peter Bowen, a Montanan, writes of the West. Cowboy, hunting and fishing guide, folksinger, poet, essayist, and novelist, he's written the picaresque Yellowstone Kelly historical novels, humour columns and essays on blood sports as Coyote Jack and the Gabriel Du Pre mysteries, in part because "the Metis are a great people, a wonderful people, and not many people know anything about them."
Book 4
The gruesome corpse of a young woman is found beside a long Montana highway called the Hi-Line. Her jaw and teeth are missing, and she is impossible to identify. Full of anger and without a clue, Du Pre begins to hunt the countryside for her murderer. As more dismembered corpses - all young women - are discovered, the small ranching community goes into shock. Madelaine, Du Pre's fierce and wise lover, makes him swear that he will do justice for the victims, whatever it takes. When Madelaine's own daughter goes missing, Du Pre becomes desperate for a clue. He cannot decipher the mysterious messages the Hi-Line Killer places in his murder scenes. Thinking like a hunter, Du Pre must imagine how a serial killer's mind works - and explore the troubling evidence that there might be two of them.
Book 5
Toussaint, Montana isn't easily rattled, but an earthquake uncovers an ancient burial ground and the well-preserved bones of a primitive people. When an archeologist is found with a bullet in his back and a dinosaur tooth in his pocket, sometime sleuth Gabriel Du Pre steps in with the wisdom and vision of his Metis ancestors to uncover the answers. But while Indians, archeologists, and entrepreneurs battle for valuable land and the precious remains of a dinosaur, a predator more dangerous than the great T. Rex walks the Montana plains, hungry to strike again...
Book 6
In Toussaint, Montana, old family secrets, forgotten for more than 100 years, come to light after a young woman and her land-owning parents die under suspicious circumstances.When Larry Messmer, the brother and son of the victims, auctions off his parents' ranch, Gabriel Du Pre discovers a string of unexplained deaths buried deep in the family's past.
Book 7
Book 8
In his eighth outing, Metis-Indian fiddler, tracker and amateur sleuth Gabriel Du Pre is called upon to act as historical advisor for a documentary film about the Lewis & Clark expedition. When Du Pre arrives at the shooting site, major trouble is brewing between the local community and the film makers: first, the star quits and then someone sets fire to the props. But when two bodies are fished out of the Missouri River, the stakes rise dramatically. And when Du Pre stumbles upon a secret cache containing Merriweather Clark's journals, tensions rise to a boiling point.
Book 9
When an eccentric old woman is found dead in her living room, her head beaten in with a hatchet. Gabriel Du Pre feels compelled to look into the matter. While searching for answers at the scene of the crime, Du Pre spies two teenagers snooping around the house. Meanwhile it's dry season, and fires blazing west of Toussaint have spread to the Wolf Mountains. Du Pre suspects the fires have been intentionally set, and his suspicions are heightened when the same two teenagers are found dead in the mountains, buried beneath ash and riddled with bullet wounds.
Book 10
A secretive millennial cult from California purchases a ranch on the outskirts of the Montana badlands---the eerily silent, dry, and windy dead zone---and the Toussaint townsfolk are none too pleased.
The cult members keep to themselves, but the suspicious circumstances under which they've arrived have Gabriel Du Pre questioning their motives and seeking answers. He soon learns from a friend in the FBI that seven of the cult's recently defected members were killed---each shot to death---but no arrests have been made. Then another shooting occurs at the perimeter of the ranch, and Du Pre finds himself blindly searching for a killer, an explanation for the murders, and the identity of the cult's elusive leader.
With "Badlands," his tenth novel in this acclaimed series, Peter Bowen has written his most timely and chilling novel to date: a story of faceless terror told in lyrical prose and steeped in the Metis tradition of storytelling.
The cult members keep to themselves, but the suspicious circumstances under which they've arrived have Gabriel Du Pre questioning their motives and seeking answers. He soon learns from a friend in the FBI that seven of the cult's recently defected members were killed---each shot to death---but no arrests have been made. Then another shooting occurs at the perimeter of the ranch, and Du Pre finds himself blindly searching for a killer, an explanation for the murders, and the identity of the cult's elusive leader.
With "Badlands," his tenth novel in this acclaimed series, Peter Bowen has written his most timely and chilling novel to date: a story of faceless terror told in lyrical prose and steeped in the Metis tradition of storytelling.
Book 11
Gabriel Du Pre, the protagonist of Peter Bowen's atmospheric, engrossing series set in the dirty, dusty Montana prairie lands, is besieged by a rumour about a parcel containing the lost' journals of Lewis and Clark. Outsiders are beginning to invade Toussaint, drawn by the spirit of the legendary explorers, not to mention the payoff for those to come up with the priceless journals. When Du Pre's friends and family wind up squarely in the face of danger, he doesn't have much choice but to wade in and fight it out, hoping to protect those who are most dear to him.
Book 12
Investigating the murder of his eccentric aunt's latest husband, Gabriel Du Pr turns for help to old friend and FBI agent Harvey Wallace and uncovers a host of suspects in Montana. By the author of The Stick Game and Thunder Horse. 10,000 first printing."
Book 13
A van full of praying, protesting fundamentalist Christians has arrived in Toussaint at about the time that Gabriel Du Pre's precocious granddaughter Pallas returns from her studies in Washington, DC. A young soldier follows, just back from Iraq missing a let, and eye, and his grip on reality. Du Pre suspects that he's going to have his hands full for the foreseeable future. First, graffiti appears on the door of a local church, and then a cryptic phone call from a missing girl causes concern in town. When a confluence of these strange events and even stranger people threatens problems that even laid back Du Pre can't ignore, another quirky, compelling, and purely enjoyable mystery unfolds in Peter Bowen's Montana, a land trouble tends to visit often, with unpredictable but fiercely entertaining results.
Book 14
"Bitter Creek is likely the top of the Du Pre series . . . Lively and absolutely fascinating" (Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall).
Lt. John Patchen has come to Montana to persuade Chappie Plaquemines, his former gunnery sergeant in Iraq, to accept the Navy Cross. First, however, Patchen must find the wounded marine, who was last seen drinking heavily in the Toussaint Saloon. With the help of Gabriel Du Pre, who's romantically involved with Chappie's mother, he locates him soon enough, disheveled and stinking of stale booze. But a sobering visit to a medicine man's sweat lodge reveals a much greater mystery: The unsolved case of a band of Metis Indians who were last seen fleeing from Gen. Black Jack Pershing's troops in 1910, before disappearing.
Strange voices within the sweat lodge speak of a place called Bitter Creek, where the Metis encountered their fate. To find it, Du Pre tracks down the only living survivor of the massacre, a feisty old woman whose memories may not be as trustworthy as they seem. But when Amalie leads Du Pre to Pardoe, an out-of-the-way crossroads north of Helena, he senses they're about to uncover long-buried secrets. Discouraged by the US military with their lives threatened by locals whose ancestors may have played a role in the murders, Chappie, Patchen, and Du Pre bravely pursue the truth so the victims of a terrible injustice might finally rest in peace.
Bitter Creek is the 14th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Lt. John Patchen has come to Montana to persuade Chappie Plaquemines, his former gunnery sergeant in Iraq, to accept the Navy Cross. First, however, Patchen must find the wounded marine, who was last seen drinking heavily in the Toussaint Saloon. With the help of Gabriel Du Pre, who's romantically involved with Chappie's mother, he locates him soon enough, disheveled and stinking of stale booze. But a sobering visit to a medicine man's sweat lodge reveals a much greater mystery: The unsolved case of a band of Metis Indians who were last seen fleeing from Gen. Black Jack Pershing's troops in 1910, before disappearing.
Strange voices within the sweat lodge speak of a place called Bitter Creek, where the Metis encountered their fate. To find it, Du Pre tracks down the only living survivor of the massacre, a feisty old woman whose memories may not be as trustworthy as they seem. But when Amalie leads Du Pre to Pardoe, an out-of-the-way crossroads north of Helena, he senses they're about to uncover long-buried secrets. Discouraged by the US military with their lives threatened by locals whose ancestors may have played a role in the murders, Chappie, Patchen, and Du Pre bravely pursue the truth so the victims of a terrible injustice might finally rest in peace.
Bitter Creek is the 14th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Book 14
Book 15
Gabriel Du PrÉ is back in action, coming to the aid of a whistleblower on the run, in this all-new novel in a “wonderfully eclectic and enjoyable series” (Booklist).
When a hunted military whistleblower and his family need someplace to hide and someone to trust, Toussaint, Montana, is the place, and Gabriel Du PrÉ the man. The MÉtis Indian former cattle inspector and sometimes deputy is happy to offer protection, even though he’s already got his hands full with an ailing granddaughter, a meddling medicine man, and a Kazakh eagle hunter prowling the hills above town.
As a guard at a Kabul prison, Hoyt Poe witnessed his fellow soldiers abusing the Afghan inmates. Poe’s testimony threatens to expose the military contractor that led the prison’s brutal interrogation program. Now, Temple Security’s billionaire founder, Lloyd Cutler, wants him dead. But how long can the fugitive and his family lay low before Cutler’s mercenaries come to Du PrÉ’s hometown looking for trouble?
Packed with pulse-pounding suspense, wry humor, and the romance of small-town Montana, Solus continues the irresistible adventures of the one of a kind Gabriel Du PrÉ, “a character of legendary proportions” (New York Times–bestselling author Ridley Pearson).
Solus is the 15th book in the Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du PrÉ, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
When a hunted military whistleblower and his family need someplace to hide and someone to trust, Toussaint, Montana, is the place, and Gabriel Du PrÉ the man. The MÉtis Indian former cattle inspector and sometimes deputy is happy to offer protection, even though he’s already got his hands full with an ailing granddaughter, a meddling medicine man, and a Kazakh eagle hunter prowling the hills above town.
As a guard at a Kabul prison, Hoyt Poe witnessed his fellow soldiers abusing the Afghan inmates. Poe’s testimony threatens to expose the military contractor that led the prison’s brutal interrogation program. Now, Temple Security’s billionaire founder, Lloyd Cutler, wants him dead. But how long can the fugitive and his family lay low before Cutler’s mercenaries come to Du PrÉ’s hometown looking for trouble?
Packed with pulse-pounding suspense, wry humor, and the romance of small-town Montana, Solus continues the irresistible adventures of the one of a kind Gabriel Du PrÉ, “a character of legendary proportions” (New York Times–bestselling author Ridley Pearson).
Solus is the 15th book in the Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du PrÉ, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pré Volume Three
by Peter Bowen
Published 16 October 2018
